Editors’ ShelfBook Recommendations from Our Former Guest Editors

Tess Gallagher recommends Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God by Tony Hoagland (Graywolf, June 2018). “No book of poetry has made me laugh out loud so I felt the good of it, or telegraphed at a cellular level a certain perspicacity of edgy enlightenment as this. Tony was long ago my student, and with this book becomes my master!”

Robert Pinsky recommends Noontimes Won, by Tristan Tzara, in a new translation by Heather Green (Octopus Books, June 2018). “These poignant, elegant, musically appealing versions, along with Green’s brief concise introduction put Tristan Tzara into an historical context that includes the resistance to fascism.”

Elizabeth Spires recommends My Bishop and other Poems by Michael Collier (University of Chicago Press, August 2018). “The title poem of this collection is a tour de force, telling the painfully complicated story of the poet’s friendship with the former Bishop of Phoenix. The poems in the collection are striking for their truth-telling, and acute in their observations and range of emotional response.”

Maura Stanton recommends Like That by Matthew Yeager (H_ NGM_N Books, 2016). “This is a collection of brilliant, funny and innovative long poems. But as long as they are, they’re so engaging you don’t want them to end.”

Maura Stanton recommends The Glitch by Elizabeth Cohen (Doubleday, May 2018), “a witty novel about the tech industry from the point of view a woman who’s trying to balance motherhood with her job as CEO of a large Silicon Valley company under attack.”

Maura Stanton recommends The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories by Denis Johnson (Random House, January 2018). “Everyone’s praising this book—and it’s indeed wonderful! When I finished the title story, I read it again before continuing with the other excellent stories.”

David St. John recommends the album The Poetry of Jazz, an exquisite collaboration by Philip Levine with his CSU, Fresno colleague Benjamin Boone, composer and saxophonist. The CD was nominated for Album of the Year in the 2018 Downbeat Magazine Reader’s Poll and the poems read by Levine both reflect and embody his lifetime love of jazz. Branford Marsalis makes a guest appearance.

David St. John recommends Tropic of Squalor: Poems by Mary Karr (HarperCollins, May 2018). “Cambridge expatriate Mary Karr reminds us, with these superb new poems, that she is one of her generation’s most powerful and moving poets. Her elegies for David Foster Wallace, Franz Wright and Deborah Digges are dazzling— and heartbreaking. Don’t miss this book.”